The Strain star Rupert Penry-Jones: I'm finding life tough

SPOOKS and Whitechapel star Rupert Penry-Jones is trying to shed his “posh boy” tag. Here he tells Rachel Corcoran why playing an unrecognisable vampire has been liberating – and how it leaves him with time to do the housework.

Rupert Penry-Jones has a TV favourite when he started acting 20 years ago

Rupert Penry-Jones has just finished a bike ride, which apparently is part of his midlife crisis. The Spooks, Silk and Whitechapel actor, whose good looks have made him a TV favourite since he started acting 20 years ago, is not happy with the fact that he’s just turned 45.

Or that he was cast as the older Duncan Grant in the recent BBC2 Bloomsbury Group series Life In Squares.

“My co-star Jack Davenport and I have been friends for years and we both said, ‘Oh my God, this is the beginning of the end – we both have younger versions.’” He laughs while sprawling at the Hampshire home he shares with his wife, actress Dervla Kirwan, and their two children Florence, 11, and Peter, nine.

I love the extreme emotions of theatre and the fact you can really let rip in a way you can’t on TV

Rupert Penry-Jones

“I’ve had older versions of me before but never had younger.”

It would be safe to say Rupert isn’t feeling any more content in himself as he gets older:

“I’m finding life tough. I don’t like getting older. I haven’t quite bought the Ferrari yet but I’ve got a very fast ‘Ferrari of road bikes’. I’m in my midlife-crisis Lycra and building up to a big bike race.”

Fortunately, Rupert’s new role as Mr Quinlan in the TV series The Strain isn’t one he won for his looks.

He appears heavily camouflaged as a centuries-old vampire – a transformation that involved him spending between three and six hours in the make-up chair.

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Rupert with his actress wife Dervla Kirwan

Rupert has always tried to stay in shape. He says: “I’m aware that one of the reasons I get the parts is because of the fact I’m not overweight and I look after myself – so the more you can do that, the more of an edge you have over other actors to get the part.

I want to try and keep looking my best for a little bit longer. Luckily for Mr Quinlan, it doesn’t matter what I look like. I can stay up all night and it actually helps.”

Both Rupert and Dervla, 43, were fans of the American horror drama series before he was offered the part. But he initially turned it down and it was only after director Guillermo del Toro rang him that Rupert found himself on a plane to Toronto, where the series is filmed.

“Guillermo said I’d be the one vampire in the show that women want to take to bed – that’s how he tried to sell the part to me,” laughs Rupert. “And I did slightly fall for it until I saw the make-up and thought, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

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'I don’t like getting older'

“I’ve been saying to the acting gods for ages that I wanted to do something different and they certainly answered my prayers. You couldn’t get more different than anything I’ve ever done before. I’ve always battled against being cast as the posh, privileged guy next door that doesn’t get the girl, or the posh nasty person.

And if you speak the way I speak, and you’re tall and blond, it’s either those parts or really amazing leading parts, which are very few and far between.

“Having been on TV in Britain for 15 years quite regularly, I felt like I needed to do something in America. Hopefully, people will be up for more from me once I’ve finished doing The Strain, so this couldn’t have come at a more perfect time.”

But Rupert has no plans to uproot his family and move across the Atlantic, despite signing up for the remaining series of The Strain. While he has filmed in Romania, South Africa and Canada this year, he wants his children to have the kind of settled upbringing he and his brother Laurence had in London with their actor parents Peter Penry-Jones and Angela Thorne.

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Rupert is unrecognisable in his latest role in his TV horror series, The Strain

“I went to two schools growing up, a primary school and a secondary school, and want my kids to have the security of being at the same place. I don’t want them to be dragged around the world,” he says.

“Unless I’m in something very long term, it’s just a huge upheaval for the children. Dervla’s career is very much here at the moment, as well. For her to move to America would affect her career – it would be a gamble – and to expect everyone to move just because I’m out there would be selfish. So I’m just going to have to keep going backwards and forwards on a plane.”

He and Irishwoman Dervla have been together for 14 years, married for eight and have a rule that they spend no longer than five weeks apart at any time.

“If one of us is away then Dervla and I will visit each other, like Dervla came out to Canada. My kids have become used to me going away and I think they enjoy it because Dervla lets them get away with a lot more than I do.”

The couple take it in turns to do the housework, which Rupert relishes.

“My wife is in a play [Mr Foote’s Other Leg] in the West End at the moment, so I’m holding the fort with the kids for a while. I was brought up by my father, as my mum was the one who was always off filming.

My dad took me to school and did all of the mum stuff, so it seems quite normal to be the guy at home. I love cooking and have even got a whole system worked out for the washing, with special baskets with everyone’s names on. After playing DI Joseph Chandler in Whitechapel, my OCD gene had a chance to flourish!

“Most of my friends with normal jobs get limited time to see their kids, so mine have a lot of time with me in comparison. I also have friends whose wives have given up their careers to stay at home with their kids.

I know I could never do that, so I don’t see why I should expect my wife to. We agreed when we met and talked about having kids that we’d just work around it and it’s basically whoever gets the job first that makes the decision.”

With actor parents and grandparents, are Peter and Florence likely to go into the profession, too?

“I wouldn’t mind if they did, but my son isn’t really interested and my daughter is only a little bit more interested,” smiles Rupert. “They both have an ability for it, but I don’t know if that means anything.

My son hates going to the theatre. Neither of them is passionate about it in the way that I was. They’re only young, so we’ll see.”

Rupert met Dervla in 2001 when they were both in the theatre production of Dangerous Corner and they have worked together a couple of times since, including on the 2005 TV mini-series Casanova. But they’re not sure they’d do it again.

“We last did a play together in Bristol and that was when we decided we probably wouldn’t work together again for a long time,” Rupert says. “We have our own worlds and lives as actors and I don’t like mixing the two, really.

And of course it’s very difficult for us to work together because of the kids. Plus there’s something a little bit navel-gazing about it. It’s the same with my family, as people try to get me to do stuff with my mum or my brother.

It’s hard to act with someone you know that well – unless you’re both in a situation where you’re being paid a million pounds to film a movie together in the Galapagos Islands about superheroes saving the world. That I would do!”

So what’s next if the Galapagos offer doesn’t come in? “I’m in The Strain for a while at least and I’d love to do a few more films. I just want good scripts and I don’t care if it’s on stage, TV or film.

I love the extreme emotions of theatre and the fact you can really let rip in a way you can’t on TV. So at the moment, I’ll just have to live vicariously through Dervla.”